I was raised Christian Armenian with Armenian as my mother tongue. When I was six, instead of going to kindergarten, my mother decided I was too smart for that, and so she took me to the Department of Education in Tehran to take an IQ test. At the time, this was not out of the ordinary. I passed the test, and so they placed me in first grade. Now, the problem with this was that for the first six years of my life, Armenian was the only language to which I had had exposure; and school instruction in Iran was predominantly in the Persian language. I failed my first test – out of thirtyeight questions, I answered only thirteen correctly. The teacher advised my mom to take me back to kindergarten, but my mom was adamant to keep me in the first grade. Thus, the entire following week, she spent teaching me the Persian alphabet. The doors of our cabinets at home became chalkboards. When I took my next test in the following week, I scored twenty-five out of thirty-eight; this was progress. I stayed in the first grade, and I still remember how I loved my teacher, Ms Odet.

Throughout the world, language and religion are typically considered markers of ethnic and national identity, and this holds true for Armenians as well. Religion and language became national identity markers for Armenians in the fourth and fifth century, respectively. I have already discussed Iranian Armenians’ endeavours to maintain their heritage by practising traditional Armenian rituals and religion as reflected in cultural productions. Since language is a crucial identity marker for Iranian Armenians, in this chapter I delve into the significance of the Armenian language within an Iranian and American diasporic context. While language and religion are considered integral to ethnicity, William Safran, a scholar of ethnic politics, argues that they do not correlate exactly with an ethno-nation. Because they may extend over more than one ethnic nation, and because members of one ethnic group may follow more than one religion or use multiple languages, Safran cautions that language and religion alone are insufficient to establish ethno-national identity.